Gimme Some Sugar

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Friday, August 23, 2013

ThinkProgress: A school in Arkansas wants any potential shooters to know: Its teachers are armed, and ready for a showdown.

Since the Arkansas Christian Academy is a private school, it is not
subject to the rules for public schools in the state that prevent
teachers from carrying firearms. To that end, the school has between one
and seven staff members carrying a weapon on any given day, according to
Pastor Perry Black, who this week posted signs that say “Staff is armed
and trained. Any attempt to harm children will be met with deadly
force.”

Black also professed to having armed guards outside of his Sunday
church services. “We reserve our right as American citizens and as
Christians to protect the children on our campus,” Black told KARK.

What would Jesus do, right? Even if we accept that taking up the
sword and not turning the other cheek is the entirely Christian approach
to violence, this is still a terrible idea. “[S]erious questions
persist about the wisdom of arming teachers,” the report goes on. “Even trained police
have a track record of mistakenly firing on civilians in standoff
situations, raising concerns about whether a teacher in a roomful of
children could be any more equipped to deal with a crazed gunman. What’s
more, it might not be in the interest of a school to let its staff
carry deadly weapons; in Kansas, a school that armed its teachers was denied coverage by major insurers, who deemed the armed teachers too great of a risk.”

Further, most of the bloodiest school massacres share one trait in common — the shooterscommitted suicide.
I’m pretty sure that the fear of imminent death is no obstacle to the
suicidal. In fact, since “deadly force” is promised by the signage and
death is often the killers’ “escape route,” Black may have made his
school more attractive to mass murderers, not less. It would just be a variation on “suicide by cop.”

All in all, nothing about this is a good idea. More guns are not the answer to school violence.